How Saving Our Inner Child Can be the First Step to Healing

I remember the day I fully became human, on that day,  I realized I was no longer a child. For, being a child is unlike being an adult in every way. I think it was a slow progression really; the day I stopped being a child. However, it wasn’t really something I ever noticed. It was comparably like hair that grows. Every 3 to 6 months, my childhood would slowly escape me but I couldn’t feel it. And every day went on like the same day just in different ways.

Can you really lose childhood like a jewel lost in the night? All those long childhood afternoons spent in wondrous splendor vanished so completely – and why?

The truth is we never stop being children, for it is the innocent child in us that is an authentic representation of who we really are. To lose yourself, in its entirety, is to stop loving the child within and to compromise valuable parts of who we are for the intrinsic desire to belong. Living from a place of worthiness and compassion is being in touch with the child that once stared at the sky in wonder and awe. That crouched barefoot in the mud and dug up worms and millipedes asking the simple questions over and over again: what can this be? Youth is not a sliver of time that is compounded into our physical beings, yet it feels that way. The world tells you to grow up and get a job, to work hard like your parents and to make it in the American dream. While little by little you face the saddening consequences of forgetting you were born a child, you are a child and you will always remain a child. We try to mask our hearts like they cannot tell we love them and all the while we’re compromising, every day, who we are. It is this slow forgetful process that causes us to feel pain, to hate and to create vengeance and anger in the world. It is why we become open wounds waiting and hoping for someone to love us again. And through each new wound that emerges we hide away- we numb, we eat and we try to forget the slow blood-thinning pain.

As we get older, unfortunately, every time we’re in touch with the experience of suffering, we unconsciously believe we can’t bear it, and we stuff our feelings and memories deep down into the crevasses of our mind. All the while, your heart and your inner child are pleading and begging you for the attention it deserves: “Hey! she yells, ‘pay attention to me.’ We believe that forgetting the child who was once full of energy and playful spirit will stop the pain of our self-compromise.

It’s time to evolve! It’s time to grow up. I am too busy to take care of this… All the while, the inner child is crying for attention and we continue to run away because we’re scared of our own suffering.

Slowly we cannot feel and we can hardly see and feel compassion for others, but our inner child is with us and she is saying you need me and I need you. However, it is by rescuing the child within us that we begin to live again. It is by finally seeing and acknowledging our childhood wounds and our own self-compromise that we’re inspired to live more in-tune, authentic lives. By reaching out an acknowledging the hurt inner child, not only do we save ourselves but we save our relationships, our experiences, and friendships.